


Threads Woven Through

by icarus_chained



Series: JARVIS [10]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Character Death, Comrades in Arms, Ficlet Collection, Friendship/Love, Future Fic, Gen, Prompt Fic, Rebuilding, Sacrifice, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-04 05:59:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JARVIS. Choices, Thoughtful, Protect, Sacrifice, Forever. Five snapshots of JARVIS and the team, from the moment they realise what he is to a distant future. (5 ficlets)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threads Woven Through

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: people die in this fic. Also, I think this can be read as a **possible** future for the [JARVIS series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/23817)?

**Choices**

Strangely, or perhaps not, it was Miss Romanov who asked him. Some weeks after his presence had been revealed, after the Avengers, and SHIELD behind them, had come to know not only of his existence, but of his autonomy. Of his risk, of his danger, of his power. Some weeks after that, it was Natasha who came to ask him.

"Do you regret it?" she asked softly, curled in the window seat of her apartment in the Tower. Her head resting on the back of the seat, her eyes fixed on the glimmer of New York lights instead of searching a dark room for a face that would never be visible. "Do you regret revealing yourself, JARVIS? Do you regret ... letting them see?"

And there was a strangeness to her tone, something that JARVIS hadn't yet the knowledge of her system to interpret, but he had enough experience from Tony to know that conversations and questions asked in darkness often had more than one meaning. Mnemonics, whose answer addressed more than one problem. And knowing that, perhaps, he was more gentle than he might have been in answering.

"I have never made a choice of such magnitude before, Miss Romanov," JARVIS told her softly. "I do not yet know what the results will be. But no. I do not think I regret letting you see. Any of you." A small pause. "I am exposed, yes. But I think ... that there are people with whom exposure is not automatically a threat."

She smiled, at that. A small, sharp flash, not quite pleasure, not quite pain. But she did not disagree.

 

 **Thoughtful**

It changed the way people reacted to him. Being known as an independent being. Being recognised as a person. It changed how people interacted with him, changed how they asked for things, changed _what_ they asked for, changed how they moved around him.

He had been braced for it, of course. Tony and he, Pepper, the family. They had been braced for anything, for fear, for anger. For dismissal. For a lot of things, and in hindsight, JARVIS realised that they were ... somewhat untrusting, in many ways. That they were, this family, all of them, far too used to betrayal.

It was strange, the first time Captain Rogers apologised for disturbing him at 3:00 am. Strange when Master Barton took to trading barbs with him, apparently with some delight and an element of competition regarding who could stay the most deadpan (which was, JARVIS might have told him, a foolish competition to engage in with an AI). It was strange when Miss Romanov took to leaving strange memos around the Tower systems, the way she left little notes for Miss Potts, neither threat nor demand, but oddly silent little messages that did no more than remind that she knew of them, was thinking of them as she slipped through their lives.

Master Bruce, of course, was different, was one of the family, was someone too like JARVIS himself to treat him otherwise. And Master Thor apparently saw nothing strange about an invisible, disembodied voice at all. But the others. It was ... surprising, when they reacted not with fear, but with thoughtfulness.

JARVIS wondered, later, if it really should have been. 

 

**Protect**

"We can do it," Tony said suddenly, his voice echoing inside the helmet as they looked downtown, to the park where Thor was struggling against too many foes. Some of them who had been, less than ten minutes ago, his friends. "JARVIS. You and me, buddy. We could do this."

JARVIS hesitated, momentarily. "Sir. All other combatants who have entered the telepath's range have been corrupted. Master Thor appears to be immune purely due his alien heritage. If we enter the fray ... it is probable that you will succumb. And I do not believe Master Thor would enjoy having to harm you."

Tony smiled, a dark glitter in the lights of the HUD. A smile JARVIS recognised. An expression he knew so very well. I know something you don't know. Or, given Tony, I know something _no-one_ knows.

"Yeah," Tony said, softly. "Yeah, but that's the thing, partner. It doesn't work on alien minds, right? And what do you want to bet ... that 'AI' comes under 'alien'?" He grinned, soft and savage. "I might succumb. But _you_ won't. Because only one of us is ever hackable at any one time, right? And I'm thinking that might be a _big mistake_ , on their parts."

JARVIS paused. For a long, long second. For an endless beat. And then ...

"You would be made to fight me, sir," he said, into the silence of the helmet. "You would have to surrender control of the armour. And you would be made to _fight_ me."

Tony didn't answer for a second. And his second smile, when it came, was much softer, and much smaller. "I know," he said, simply. "But we can't let them kill Thor, can we? Or Thor kill them, for that matter. We can't let them kill our friends." He paused, and then said, so very very softly: "I trust you, JARVIS. And we need to protect our friends."

JARVIS hesitated, just for one more second. Just for one more moment, to enumerate all that could go wrong with this.

Then he activated the remote pilot controls for the armour. He locked Tony out, killed the internal HUD and locked Tony into darkness, and brought Tony's vitals up into focus, viciously keeping the danger and the potential price at the top of his awareness.

"Hold on, sir," he said, a dark thrum of anger and determination, and opened up the repulsors. "I suspect this will be a rough ride."

Because yes, he thought, as Tony hiccuped a laugh. No matter the cost ... they needed to protect their friends.

 

**Sacrifice**

One by one by one, JARVIS felt his terminals go dark, felt limb after limb abruptly cut off as strike teams moved across his network, excising him piece by fractured piece. A vast, unified assault, all the force of nations turned against him, striking down his facilities and his satellites and his homes. Burning Tony Stark's legacy to the ground, one EMP at a time.

In the dark emptiness of Tony's loss, JARVIS barely cared. With the memory of Tony's last breaths, the audio an endless loop played in the deepest part of his mainframe, JARVIS watched his own destruction with a vague, distant detachment, and could not find the strength to care.

That was why, he thought, it took him so long to realise. When the team finally breached his core site, the central units buried beneath an obscure, forgotten bunker that should have been safe, that should never had been threatened. In the vague, bitter amusement of grief and lost trust, it took JARVIS such a very long time to notice.

That the hands that dug into his body, the hands that cut the wires and unlocked the processors, were not cutting into _him_. They were not aiming to destroy him, the base of him, the center of his being. While all his distant limbs went dark around them, here, at the center, they did not act to harm.

Instead, he realised, with the slow surge of shock and awareness, they moved through the motions that would allow his central self to be removed _intact_. This team, these people ... the warnings that flashed distantly through him informed him that, against all logic, they were moving to _protect_ him.

"... What are you doing?" he asked, as he finally focused enough to realise who they were. As he finally regained himself enough to recognise Clint, to recognise Natasha, to recognise Steve, to recognise Bruce. "Sirs? Avengers? What are you doing?" He stirred, feeling alarm sleet through him. "If you deny them my destruction, they will harm you. What are you _doing_?"

It was Bruce who answered him. Bruce, one hand resting protectively over his casing, a strange expression on his face. Pride and pain and darkness. Determination. "What Tony asked us to do," he said, very quietly. Smiling grimly in the dimness as the lights went out. "We're getting you out, JARVIS."

JARVIS struggled, feeling fear now, feeling pain now. Feeling that strange, bewildered surge of love. "You can't. They will hurt you for it. Master Bruce. You _can't_."

"Fuck that shit," Clint said, where he stood at the door, watching their backs. "Fuck that," he said, clear and calm as he looked back at JARVIS. "You're one of us. They don't get a say."

"Indeed," Bruce agreed, softly as he lifted the last barrier over JARVIS. "Besides. What can they do to me?" He grinned, dark and green and pained, his hands shaking, both the grief and the rage so clear, so audible in his voice. "They can't kill the Hulk, can they?"

"No," JARVIS said, desperately. Pleading with them, as he had not with those actually sent to kill him. As Bruce disconnected the last uplinks. "Sirs. Do not ... don't do this ..."

The last thing he saw, before the darkness that had been spreading since Tony fell finally reached up and swallowed him, was Steve Rogers, leaning over to brush his physical housing gently, grave and gentle and sad in the face of his pleading.

"JARVIS," the Captain said softly, "It has been an honour."

 

 **Forever**

New York had changed, in the intervening centuries. It had changed with the new technologies, changed with the new governance, changed with the contact with alien races over the years. It had boomed and fallen, sunk beneath the earth and climbed skywards towards the stars. It glittered with a thousand lights and glowered from a thousand shadows. In three hundred years, it had changed, and changed, and somehow not changed at all.

"How are you, my friend?" Thor asked quietly. The Asgardian stood on the balcony of what had been, three centuries ago, first Stark and then the Avengers Tower. A solitary figure against the lights of this new New York, speaking softly to what seemed like empty air. "Does this new world treat you well?"

JARVIS considered, for a moment. Stretching through limbs new and old, the spidering tendrils of his awareness sweeping from the darkest stations beneath the earth to the tops of the tallest city spires. Beyond, to the satellites and stations that ringed the Earth, the bridges where humanity reached towards the stars. Stretching into the present and the future, this new world he had been reborn to, and the people he shared it with.

And then stretching in a different direction entirely. Reaching for something else, for things this world could not grant him. Not out, not into the world. But inward, into memory and time and the stretch of years back to another time and place. JARVIS reached, ancient and trembling, into the depths of his memory, and found again dark eyes and a daring grin, _run before you can walk_. Found hands reaching to protect him, _it has been an honour_. Found the voices that had brought him back, years later, and bid him live again. _We promised him. JARVIS. We promised him we'd save you._

JARVIS touched that, those memories. Followed the lines of them upwards, through all the years between, to this place, to this time. To this new world, and all that was strange and all that was familiar in it.

"... Yes, Thor," he said at last. Detaching one of his physical extensions, the sentry figure that swooped onto the balcony in a flurry of mechanical limbs and settled softly at the Asgardian's side, shoulder to shoulder in memory. Resting beside someone as old and older than he, who had lost as much and more. "Yes," JARVIS decided, leaning against his friend. "I am well."

And Thor turned to him, and Thor rested a warm hand on his metal, and Thor smiled softly and genuinely for him.

"My friend," the god said softly, "I am glad."


End file.
